Goodbye old pedalboard

[PunkKitty]

And hello new pedalboard.

I'm still around. But I haven't been using Heritage guitars much because I fell on some hard times and had to sell most of them. All that I have left is an H-137 with a badly done, but functional, headstock repair. As you know, that even though I like classic rock, I'm not exactly a classic rock person. That being said, I still listen to a lot of prog (Yes, King Crimson, old Genesis, etc).  I like a lot of different music, and much of it is newer.

I was recently recruited into a Boygenius tribute project. They are a band of 3 women, Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, and Julien Baker, who do some fantastic vocals and are very gifted. They have won several Grammys, and have done very well for themselves. Julien is a multi instrumentalist (piano, mandolin, banjo, guitar) who has performed with the National Orchestra at Kennedy Center. In addition to vocals, piano, etc, she played lead guitar with BG. Lucy just released a new album that is rising in the charts. Phoebe is working on new music. Together, they formed what what was considered a supergroup. BG was a side project for all of them. I would categorize their music as sapphic pop. Let's just say that it's very... gay.

Anyway, I'm playing lead in this project and have been working on dissecting Julien's solos, background guitar work, and the effects she used. She layers effects. It's not uncommon to have multiple distortion/OD, multiple delays, choruses, etc all layered on top of each other for one track. In the past, I usually used distortion/OD, and that's about it. So this is new territory for me. I was also never much of a lead player. That's changing. I'm using Strats for this project because I need tremolo bars. She uses a Tele with a Bigsby. I have Strats, so that will have to do. 

I was lugging around a pedal board weighing about 17 pounds for this. And tap dancing in the middle of songs was getting difficult. I almost tripped while doing it at rehearsal last week. So something had to change. And this is less expensive than the copay for a broken leg. I'll offset the cost by selling most of my analog pedals.

The Boss GX-10 that I bought has 170 effects built in. I can chain up to 17 effects in one patch. I can arrange the patches into a set list so I can pull them up sequentially for a performance or rehearsal. It's a nifty little package. It's also more intuitive than any multi effects unit I've used. I can edit via the screen on the front panel or my laptop. And there are many patches available for download. I'm wondering why I didn't do this sooner.

Here's a sample of some of the stuff I'm learning.

This is another song we are working on. All the strange sounds in the background are Julien's work.

 

[PunkKitty]

At the moment, this is my LP type. It's a MIC Burny LPC. It's also better than most LP's I've played, including Gibsons and some Heritage. I put a set of Gibson T-Type pickups in it. I love this guitar. Steve Hackett tours with these. If they are good enough for him, they are good enough for me. I'll get another H-150 at some point. But now is not the right time.

[DetroitBlues]

Nice looking guitar.  I've also contemplated the full multi-effects route as I had a pedal board that was way too heavy and had a couple of failures that took way to long to figure out.

I've simplified a lot of it and sold off a bunch of pedals to use mutli-purpose pedals.  (Not really "multi-effects")

How does this unit compare tonal-wise to what you had before?

Here’s my slimmer board, I have swapped the Timmy and the BM so I can use the BM as a volume/clean boost. The Wampler has two inputs and two outputs so I can save presets as either a preamp effect or use in the effects loop.

Edited April 8 by DetroitBlues

[PunkKitty]

I really like it. The sounds I can get out of it are easily as good, or better, than my analog pedals. The computer interface is intuitive. You can use drag and drop on the screen on the unit. It's like having 170 pedals in a 7 pound box that fits in a backpack and has only one thing to hook up. There's no way I'd go back to analog. This was not the bottom of the line. It was $400 + tax. Thankfully, I got 0% financing at CME.

[ElNumero]

Congratulations Monica hey listen I’m trying to assemble a new peddle board since the boss paddleboard I had with most of all of my Boss petals was destroyed in the flood water/September. I’m slowly rebuilding my pedal collection, which is not gonna be very extensive, but tha assist, I will need a peddle board  of some type. Do you have one for sale?

[rwinking]

I have never used that GX-10 but having a zillion Boss FX for that price is great. I use Line 6 and Quad Cortex for FX and they are all great. I have messed with Headrush and Ampero and liked them too. Boss has to be great or they would be pushed out, given all of the great competition. Why anyone would spend $400 on a couple of Boss pedals when you can get the same pedals plus a shit ton more for the same price is beyond me.

BTW, I like the music you are learning. It will be fun trying to cop those sounds. But you have the gear to pull it off!

[ElNumero]

10 hours ago, rwinking said:

I have never used that GX-10 but having a zillion Boss FX for that price is great. I use Line 6 and Quad Cortex for FX and they are all great. I have messed with Headrush and Ampero and liked them too. Boss has to be great or they would be pushed out, given all of the great competition. Why anyone would spend $400 on a couple of Boss pedals when you can get the same pedals plus a shit ton more for the same price is beyond me.

BTW, I like the music you are learning. It will be fun trying to cop those sounds. But you have the gear to pull it off!

Some people just like the flexibility of having individual pedals that was my case before six months ago. I think I had probably about 10 Boss pedals or more all strung horizontally across on a peddle board . I just don’t like those all in one type of effect units they never are easy to use in my opinion.

[PunkKitty]

7 hours ago, ElNumero said:

Some people just like the flexibility of having individual pedals that was my case before six months ago. I think I had probably about 10 Boss pedals or more all strung horizontally across on a peddle board . I just don’t like those all in one type of effect units they never are easy to use in my opinion.

I felt the same way. But this one is really easy to program and work with. I just don't see the point of going back to an analog setup. However, this does have an effects loop for the few pedals that this doesn't have. I have some inexpensive modulation pedals from Amazon that produce some really unique sounds. They only run about $35 each. But two of those gives me most of the functions of a good guitar synth pedal. And I can add them to any patch that I want. Fun stuff.

Edited 3 hours ago by PunkKitty

[ElNumero]

51 minutes ago, PunkKitty said:

I felt the same way. But this one is really easy to program and work with. I just don't see the point of going back to an analog setup. However, this does have an effects loop for the few pedals that this doesn't have. I have some inexpensive modulation pedals from Amazon that produce some really unique sounds. They only run about $35 each. But two of those gives me most of the functions of a good guitar synth pedal. And I can add them to any patch that I want. Fun stuff.

That’s awesome! 

[ElNumero]

I just snagged a mint Fulltone Fulldrive on Sweetwater gear sales page for $79 shipped. This replaces the 10th anniversary FD that Kuz sold me about 5 years ago, destroyed in the flood.